06 November 2011

Virgin Media Superhub

------------------ Updated 8/12/2011 at the bottom ------------------

VirginMedia has certainly been having a lot of trouble this year with serving its customers Blizzard's content, such as World of Warcraft. Recently I decided to upgrade to their 30Mb service and I ended up using their superhub (at the time it was the only option), and then the problems began.

While trying to download a copy of Startcraft 2, I found that the superhub would spontaneously reboot. So I found a thread on the Virgin forums and PM'ed the moderators to get a replacement hub. It turns up and again I try to download again, this time I try the Word of Warcraft downloader. No surprise it was still doing the reboot, so I phone virgin and 45 mins later I talk to first line support who acknowledge there is a problem, 20 mins later I get told to turn of everything except firewall features.

Services

Firewall Features

Enable

Ipsec PassThrough

Enable

PPTP PassThrough

Enable

Multicast

Enable

Port Scan Detection

Enable

IP Flood Detection

Enable

Web Features

Filter Proxy

Enable

Filter Cookies

Enable

Filter Java Applets

Enable

Filter ActiveX

Enable

Filter Popup Windows

Enable

Block Fragmented IP Packets

Enable

The thinking being, that 'IP Flood Detection' was the main cause, due to the Blizzard downloader using P2P Technology. Now P2P breaking SOHO routers is hardly new but considering this is the premium Superhub new from Virgin Media to give everyone the best experience...... it should work.

Well it didn't take long to come to the conclusion that this didn't work. Now awaiting second line to get back to me with an update, though in the following thread it seems even with Firewall Features off it still breaks.

Found a few posts on the Blizzard forums, Virgin forums and around the Internet (this one for Wow patch 4.2 or this). Blizzard customer service said I could post on the customer service part of the WoW forums as there would be quite a bit of interest in it. Alas this doesn't work as I created a trial account so now awaiting something back from Blizzard so I or they can post.

Now I know I can turn off the P2P mode, however so far I've found the download speed from non-P2P is sooooo slow, it is quicker to run in P2P mode and let it crash one every few mins! Plus if anyone else in the house wants to phone Virgin for support while I'm away, then Virgin only talk with you if you're running their kit!

P.S. Looks like VM have passed this onto their Firmware team, however they seem to have some internal communication issues letting their customers know!

------------------ Updated 8/12/2011 ------------------

Just got a private message from Mark Wilkin at VirginMedia and he's updated a couple of the threads. Here is the latest: -

Here's an update on this issue (F001797677). We've been talking to our partners Netgear about this, they've identified what's causing this problem with the Super Hub and they're currently investigating a fix to be included in a future firmware update.

In the meantime we've confirmed that as a workaround for this problem you can connect directly to your Super Hub in Modem Mode to download these files without causing reboots.

As soon as we have more news on this we'll post an update on the forum, sorry for the inconvience.

Thanks

Mark WilkinHelp & Support Forum Manager

------------------ Updated 1/06/2012 ------------------

Well it may taken a year since the first reports of problems but it looks like Virgin is finally getting a fix together.

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My Blog

Testing my new blog, mainly going to do what everyone else does and forget to update it. Though I also want to use it for work so when we get a really weird problem I can post the solution up and through the power of Google search maybe someone out there will find it useful.